Having one company leave a single nvidia generation of cards out is not a big deal, seriously. It happens all the time in a volatile IT market. For instance I own Gainward 4850 golden sample card, and that series is probably all that Gainward ever made of ATi. They don't even keep them on their site anymore, which is a shame; I am most pleased with my gaming card.

However, if this turns into a trend and other companies start to follow XFX, like MSI, Gigabyte or ASUS, that would generate A LOT of additional bad press and lost sales for Nvidia. Saying that Fermi is a troubled chip is a euphemism. It's absolutely terrible. Reaching 100 degrees Celsius under load and having a total scream of more than 60db after half an hour of gaming renders it completely useless for serious GPGPU tasks, and most of us who wanted to upgrade our folding rigs will simply give up on Fermi. I'm not even going to say anything about gaming performance or PSU requirements. Loosing board makers would just make things more difficult for Nvidia. Even clueless will start wondering where did all the manufacturers go, and if regular people and brand loyalist start to google in search for answers and find a couple of videos of GTX 480 screaming at a camera - it's bye-bye mainstream market for a long time.